Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody; Wayne Simmons; Remy Porter; Thomas Emson; Rod Glenn; Shaun Jeffrey; John Russo; Tony Burgess; A P Fuchs; Bowie V Ibarra

  “Oh, shit,” whispered Trevor, backing away. “Oh … shit.”

  Todd gaped at the horrific scene, but then managed, “Open the gate, Trevor. You know the combination. Open the goddamn gate!”

  Trevor was staggering backwards, muttering ‘oh shit’ over and over again.

  “Trevor, let them out!” yelled Todd. The five friends screamed at him.

  Todd grasped at Trevor, but he shoved him back, crying, “No, no!” Trevor bolted for the car. Todd started after him, but a cry for help stopped him short.

  “Help us!” the trapped friends were begging. It was Belinda’s that Todd concentrated on.

  He ran back to the gate as Trevor revved the car and sped away.

  A multitude of groans were rising on the wind as the shuffling mass drew ever closer.

  “I don’t know the combination,” said Todd, tugging at the chain.

  “Fuck it! Break for it!” yelled Geoff.

  Todd watched, helpless, as the five friends scattered. Lawrence and Heather dashed in one direction, Geoff in another and Bruce and Belinda in another.

  Todd desperately yanked on the chain then, glancing around, he noticed a large stone. Grabbing it, he started smashing it against the chain.

  Belinda screamed. Looking up, Todd saw Bruce stop in his tracks. He dropped to his knees by a hole in the ground, screaming, holding his hands out.

  Todd watched in horror as one of the creatures fell into the open grave.

  “Belinda!” he cried out.

  Bruce scrambled into the hole.

  Belinda’s screams reached new heights. Todd frantically searched for options. The bars to the cemetery were too close together for Todd to slide through, but he had to try.

  With stone in his hand, he wriggled against the iron bars. His legs and even his chest cleared them, but his head was too wide, no matter which way he tried.

  Several creatures were moving towards him. Ignoring them, he kept trying. He had to help Belinda.

  Taking a deep breath, he drove his head through. The bars tore at the sides of his head. He howled in pain, but kept pushing. Cold iron tore at his ears and blood dribbled down his cheeks. With tears in his eyes, he finally sprung free of the bars.

  Swiping at the oozing blood, he ran to the hole where Belinda and Bruce had fallen inside. Looking down, he saw Bruce wrestling with the creature. Belinda was behind him, sobbing.

  With a scream, Todd jumped into the hole, knocking the creature onto its back. The creature grasped for Todd, but he raised the rock and brought it down on the creature’s skull with a sickening crack. He repeatedly brought it smashing down onto the creature’s head until the entire skull caved in, spewing brain and gore out into the sodden earth.

  Todd stood up to see Bruce cradling Belinda.

  “Keep hold of her,” said Todd. “I got it.”

  Another creature dropped into the hole, and Todd leapt at it, smashing it in the face.

  “Get out!” yelled Todd.

  “We tried,” said Bruce, holding a blood and dirt-smeared Belinda. “It’s too high!”

  Todd gave it a try, but loose dirt gave way in his hands.

  A third creature dropped over the edge and Todd struck out at it.

  Yet another creature fell into the hole while Todd was struggling with the previous one. It landed right on top of Bruce, pinning him to the ground. It bit into his shoulder and blood sprayed Belinda’s horrified face.

  Todd leapt at the creature, dragging it clear and then battered its head in.

  Geoff appeared at the top of the hole, panting and red-faced. “Can you get out?”

  “No,” said Todd.

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered, staring at Bruce and Belinda.

  “Just run, dumbass. Get the hell out of here!” yelled Todd.

  As Geoff hesitated, two creatures grabbed him and bit into the soft flesh of his neck and arm. He screamed as they stripped flesh away from his body and wrestled him to the ground.

  “Fuck!” cried Todd. Geoff’s cries quickly turned into feeble gurgles.

  Crying, Bruce was shouting, “Belinda!” The creature had managed to bite her on the leg and arm before he had fought it off and blood was pooling around her. “Belinda, please!”

  She emitted one last rattling gasp and then her eyes rolled back into her head.

  Heather and Lawrence had ran in a wide arch, dodging creatures this way and that, and had managed to work their way back to the gates. A vehicle was pulling up and they cried out in desperation.

  Several figures dressed in chemical response suits and respirators approached the gate. Heather and Lawrence huddled together, glancing over their shoulders as one soldier cut the chain with bolt cutters.

  The soldiers pushed open the gates as Heather repeated, “Thank you! Thank you!”

  Their gratitude was greeted with gunfire as two of the suited soldiers gunned them down.

  The soldiers entered, followed by several US Army HMMWVs and trucks. Several soldiers at the rear of the column re-secured the gates and stood guard as dozens of soldiers dismounted from the vehicles.

  Systematically, present US military went to work exterminating the ghouls of past soldiers, past patriots, past Americans.

  Bruce wept over the body of his dead girlfriend. “My sweet Belinda …” He was oblivious to the gunfire above them, but Todd wasn’t.

  “Jesus Christ. What the fuck is going on up there?” asked Todd. Tracers lit up the sky above them.

  “The Army? They’ve come to save us,” Bruce muttered between sobs.

  “Hopefully. Just wait. If they’re getting those things, we don’t want them to confuse them with us.”

  Bruce looked down at Belinda. Her eyes were closed. A tear fell from his cheek onto her already cold, pale face.

  Her eyes opened and glared up at the night sky.

  “Belinda?” uttered Bruce in shock. “Belinda!”

  Like an infant child taking in the world for the first time, she looked into Bruce’s eyes. The light that he found in her eyes, the light that once filled his heart with joy, was replaced with a cruel darkness. A milky film rested over her eyes like cataracts. She smiled.

  “Oh, Belinda! You’re alive!” he cried and bent down to kiss her.

  “No!” shouted Todd.

  As Bruce kissed his young love, for a moment it felt like their past kissed, but then he felt the chill on her lips and her stiff, searching tongue.

  He started to pull away, but Belinda grabbed his head and pulled him to her. This time, Belinda kissed with her teeth, tearing his lips away from his face. He tried to wrestle with her vice-like embrace, but she bit again into his shoulder.

  Todd jumped in, kicking her in the head, knocking her away as Bruce screamed. Bruce scrambled away as Todd smashed Belinda’s head with the stone. Tears fell from his eyes as his heart broke along with Belinda’s skull.

  In desperation, Bruce clawed at the loose earth at the lip of the grave.

  “I’m so sorry,” Todd whispered weakly. Chunks of Belinda’s hair and scalp clung to the rock in his hand. Her blood dripped from his fingers.

  An explosion rocked the ground nearby, knocking small bits of earth onto their upturned faces.

  Blood loss and pain finally started taking its toll on Bruce. Clutching his wounded shoulder, he crouched in the corner, whimpering through his torn mouth.

  Todd couldn’t bear to look at him. The boy’s face was mangled. His whimpering slowly ebbed away.

  The gunfire was getting closer, louder. Todd cringed in fear. A sense of impending doom filled his heart.

  Todd glanced at Bruce. His trembling was growing weaker. Todd and Trevor used to take great joy in humiliating others, making them cry, making them beg for mercy. The tables had turned and now he was the one terrified and praying for mercy.

  “I’m sorry I called you a faggot, Bruce,” Todd managed in a hoarse whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  Bruce gazed at his former enemy through glazed eyes. Th
oughts of his parents, of his faith, filled his mind as it spun towards oblivion.

  Seeing Bruce’s face grow pale, Todd began to whimper. As tears began to lace his cheeks, two masked figures appeared at the top of the grave. They looked down into the pit swimming with death.

  Staring up at them, Todd begged, “Please don’t hurt us.” He couldn’t remember if he had ever begged before. But now, he held his hands up in submission. “Please, help us.”

  For Bruce, it was as if time all but ground to a halt. As life drained from his body, he glanced up as another explosion rocked the grave. Tracers lit up the sky, and just out of the corner of his eye, Bruce caught sight of it. It was waving in the cold October night. Old Glory. The Stars and Stripes. The American flag. In all the chaos, he hadn’t noticed it before. Someone had placed the flag at the graveside, for the soldier whose home it would become.

  Bruce managed a rasping laugh as explosions and tracers lit up the night sky. The National Anthem filled his darkening mind:

  “… and the rockets’ red glare

  The bombs bursting in air

  Gave proof through the night

  That our flag was still there.

  O, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave

  O’r the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

  The masked figures opened fire.

  THE END

  ZOMBIE WORLD

  Death Perception

  By

  Calvin A. L. Miller II

  OK, so the letter read something like this:

  Mr. Christian–

  We received your request to live among the undead population at our ZOMBIE WORLD Theme Park Reserve. Your desire to journal it for your next book, “Death Perception”, is quite intriguing to us. We feel it’s a great match and have contacted your publisher to make arrangements.

  We look forward to working with you and will be in touch to prepare you for your indoctrination at the end of the month.

  Sincerely,

  Tom Stevens

  Director, Zombie World Parks, Inc.

  A “working vacation” living amongst the undead … I got the idea when I first heard about Zombie World, the new ‘Living Dead Theme Park Reserve’ that was created out here in the New Mexico desert after people in several parts of the U.S. refused to die. I say this because it’s the best way I can think of to put it. People, who by all accounts should have been dead, weren’t. They kept walking. Some even kept talking. At first they didn’t do much else. They just kind of staggered around harmlessly, going about their business or least trying to. As you can imagine, this caused quite a bit of confusion and fear wherever it took place. There didn’t seem to be any real danger, so a full on “Zombie Movie” style war against the dead seemed to be a little cruel and unusual. They were people after all, and like I said, they didn’t bother anybody.

  At first.

  Seems it didn’t take long to become that “Zombie Movie” in quite a few areas around the country and the world. Not a huge Apocalypse type deal, we’re talking thousands not millions, but the dead did begin to viciously attack and eat the living. They even attacked each other on occasion. Bites, scratches, or any exchange of bodily fluid from the undead would kill the living and turn them into, well, Zombies. Seemed like the longer one of them was around, the angrier and more dangerous he or she would get. So the best way to handle them was early on, as soon as possible after reanimation. They’d comply with being moved or confined fairly easily then. That ease of handling, coupled with the fact that the incidents of infection were few and far between, allowed most of the civilized world to control this whole new way of death to some degree. Sure there continued to be ‘incidents’, but these were under control for the most part. The U.S. and the entire Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, Eastern China, Japan, and Australia are all safe and controlled. At least for now. But there are no flights in or out of Africa at all anymore. Same with Eastern Europe and most of Asia. The problem is too widespread and dangerous there. At least that’s what they tell us.

  But how do you answer the big question? What do we do with the undead? Many folks, including yours truly, viewed them as sick, mentally incapacitated victims of whatever man or God-made malady that had befallen them. Couldn’t just put them down now could you? That works fine in fiction, but in real life people have rights even if they don’t have a true heart beat. And they did need to be studied, because no one had yet figured out why the hell they were still walking. Complete mystery. Theories included a viral infection, religious repercussions, and even mass hysteria. As if people were just imagining the dead walking? Not a chance. It was real and people were scared, amazed, and interested in the undead. And in this world fear, amazement, and interest equals opportunity.

  So ‘ZOMBIE WORLD, Your Ultimate Vacation Destination’ was born.

  Some corporation thought up the idea to capture and herd them all into reserves and parks and charge admission so people could see real ‘live’ Zombies. The money taken in would go to researching the cause and the cure of the outbreak right there in labs at the parks. ‘Come and make your vacation something spectacular, something you’ll remember, something AMAZING’ read the ads for the park. Hell, I was intrigued and thought about it a lot. Several different packages were available, from a short stroll through the park on a raised protected path right up to riding in a fortified bus through the ‘middle of the insanity’. I was intrigued and started wondering if there was a way for me to write a story on these undead people and how they ‘lived’. But a view from a bus didn’t seem to be enough to really understand them and write a proper story. Then one day it just hit me after my girlfriend Carrie went off to work one morning. I would live amongst the undead, you know, like that Monkey Lady. She lived alongside the monkeys and they recognized her as one of their own. I could do that with the ghouls of ZOMBIE WORLD. I could act like them and keep a journal of what went on. Death Perception seemed like a great title so I went with it. I would live with them, see how they reacted with one another, and learn what was going on in their ranks. My publisher, Nick Carroll, and I contacted them and I got the letter of acceptance about a month ago.

  So here I am, waiting for my ‘ride’ to the park to come get me. They had some people come by a few days ago and talk to me about the whole deal and how it would go down. Where I’d be staying, how they’d take me there, and what I would need. Also the steps I needed to take to disinfect and prep myself for the adventure. They don’t want any strange smells or infectants on me, for my own safety. Evidently the park residents attack what smells too much like the living, or even the dead at times, so it’s best to be completely sterilized. They have an amazing sense of smell. To make sure I did everything correctly, they had a couple of guys come out and get me ready this morning. Real top notch folks they are, and I appreciate all the help. They really make me feel safe.

  To prepare to journal my activities once I arrive, I recently started practicing my long hand. Doesn’t seem practical to write my journal any other way then by hand, so I’m recording any ideas I have now to get used to writing again. Not as easy a task as I thought it would be. All these years of typing must’ve really done a number on my penmanship; I mean I hardly write at all anymore. I type everything now, but who doesn’t? Not sure when they’re going to be here so I just sit here in my chair and wait, writing and catching up on my daytime TV. Not many game shows or talk shows on anymore, but a shit load of celebrity news and court TV. I start thinking about how I watched old sitcoms as a kid when I was home from school and hunt for them now. Nothing. No matter, I’m ready to go and they are probably coming soon. With that there’s a knock on the door and my publisher, Nick, walks in before I have a chance to get up and let him in. He rarely waits for me to answer the door. The familiarity is comforting, and a bit annoying, but he’s my best friend.

  “James it’s time to hit the road,” he says with his usual energetic voice. “I hear you’ve done the disinfecting proc
edures with the gentlemen that came earlier, so are you ready?” I nod and smile.

  “Where’s Carrie?” I ask. I hadn’t seen my girlfriend since I signed up for the story. She thinks it’s risky and stupid and hasn’t spoken to me in weeks.

  “Carrie couldn’t make it, James, we talked about that. She sends her love though,” Nick answers. It’s probably best she didn’t come; I hate to see her cry. Besides, I had told her I wanted to do this alone. I have to, or it won’t work out right.

  “Let’s go,” I say as the park folks walk me out to the black SUV with Nick. We get in and begin to move.

  “Now James,” Nick begins. “This is going to be like nothing you’ve ever done. You need to watch out for yourself, some of these undead bastards are dangerous. You have to blend in and not cause any trouble. That’s the best way to survive. Don’t do anything to attract attention.”

  “I know. I have it under control.” I assure him.

  I look out the window and notice all the cars parked in the lots and think a while about all the people that must vacation here at the park. It wasn’t a very long ride to get here since I live fairly close. I love it in the South-western U.S. and I’ve lived here since I was young. The desert nights are great for writing and pretty much anything else. We get out of the car and walk up the ramp into the facility. Nick and I say our goodbyes and he tells me again to be careful. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I can’t control myself. I break the rules and give him a long embrace.

  “Separate them before he’s contaminated!” One man shouts. “We can’t risk contamination!” As they pull us apart I realize I shouldn’t have done that. I say goodbye to Nick and I’m escorted in to begin processing. Evidently my contact with Nick contaminated me enough to require me to be disinfected and prepped again. Like I said, too many different smells are bad, and Nick can wear some cologne. My escorts are already in Hazmat suits so they won’t contaminate me. I think hard about what I’m going to do, but I was told the dangers and I’m willing to take the chances. The opportunity to write this story is literally the chance of a lifetime.